In traditional business models, users purchased computing devices and software for execution on the computing devices. Therefore, traditional computing devices were configured for “general purpose” execution of software desired by the user and not limited, by itself, to execution of particular software. For example, under this traditional business model the user may purchase a desktop personal computer (PC) having an operating system that permits execution of a wide range of applications, such as games, word processors, spreadsheets, and so on that may be obtained from a wide range of venders. Therefore, a provider of the desktop PC typically used a configuration that enabled the PC to execute as many of these different applications as possible, thereby increasing the functionality available to the user and consequently the desirability of the PC to the user.
To protect against piracy of software and other content, techniques were developed for Digital Rights Management (DRM). For example, DRM may be used to protect the rights of content owners and service providers from unauthorized access to content (e.g., a music file) and/or a service (e.g., a pay-per-view movie streamed over a network from a service provider). For example, DRM techniques may be used to combat unauthorized file sharing between users over a peer-to-peer network. Even though these traditional techniques may be successful in protecting the content, however these techniques were generally targeted at the content itself and not toward the computing device that executes the software. Therefore, even though the content itself may be protected, providers of computing devices (e.g., the desktop PC) were still limited to traditional business models to collect revenue from users.